In Shining Armor

Krish Nayar is damp. He’s cold. He’s an American lost in the foggy woods of Wales and sporting a sprained ankle. When a handsome renaissance faire player in shining armor, Bleddyn ap Rhys, rescues Krish from stumbling around and getting even more lost, Krish thinks his prayers are answered. At least until Bleddyn brings him to Castle Gwydir, where everyone lives like it really is Medieval Wales, no one knows what an iPhone or indoor plumbing is, and where, by all accounts, the year is 1626.

Traveling four hundred years into the past is improbable, but apparently not impossible. Learning to fit in with medieval Welshmen is difficult, but not impossible. What’s impossible is Krish not losing his heart to gallant Bleddyn in a time when, if acted on, their love means a death sentence.

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In Shining Armor

London 1889. For Ira Adler, former rent-boy and present plaything of crime lord Cain Goddard, stealing back the statue from Goddard's blackmailer should have been a doddle. But inside the statue is evidence that could put Goddard away for a long time under the sodomy laws, and everyone's after it, including Ira's bitter ex, Dr. Timothy Lazarus. No sooner does Ira have the porcelain dog in his hot little hands, than he loses it to a nimble-fingered prostitute. As Ira's search for the dog drags him back to the mean East End streets where he grew up, he discovers secrets about his own past, and about Goddard's present business dealings, which make him question everything he thought he knew. An old friend turns up dead, and an old enemy proves himself a friend. Goddard is pressing Ira for a commitment, but every new discovery casts doubt on whether Ira can, in good conscience, remain with him. In the end, Ira must choose between his hard-won life of luxury and standing against a grievous wrong.

Contemporary Gay Romances is the third collection of short fiction by legendary novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano (The Lure, Like People in History, Ambidextrous). It is also his most diverse in terms of the times, places, themes, characters and situations he writes about. Filled with the unexpected, the true, and the amazing, Contemporary Gay Romances moves with ease from gas-lit, upper class London, to a future, climate-altered Bay Area; from semi-rural Florida to Southern California beaches, to an extrasolar planet where people have surprising existences. His characters range from ordinary American suburban housewives to extraordinary children, from grieving young geologists and memory-haunted middle aged men, to British Midlands soccer stars and 22nd Century war heroes. Picano subtitled this collection of stylish, unique, and moving works "Tragic, Comic, Mystic & Horrific," and they are all that and more. The ten tales include prize winners as well as stories published here for the first time, and are as different from any standard "romances" as you can get, but they will linger in the mind and memory.

Vernon has a quest and Harold has a secret. They have gone to the desert in search of the source of the missile that destroyed the Diamond City. But this is no harmless expedition. As they go into the depths of the desert, they learn that not only are their love and lives at stake, but so is the fate of everything they hold dear.

As the sands blow them off course, Harold grapples with the knowledge that he has been changed by his experiences in the Diamond City. Infected with the technology of the Ancients, he feels himself changing, becoming something other than human. Does Harold have the courage to tell Vernon the truth about himself? Does Vernon love Harold enough to accept that he might no longer be human? They might not have time to find out as the sleeping Progenitors stir.

Joel Patterson should be happier than ever. He's just returned from a two-week vacation in London, where he met Philip, who might be the man of his dreams. Instead, Joel's heading to Maine for his mother's funeral. He quits his job to fulfill one last request for his mother: unload his parents' albatross of an RV by delivering it to an old family friend--in California.

Somehow, Joel's high school "friend" Lincoln has invited himself along on the ride--and into Joel's bed. The other person who's invited herself along? The ghost of his mother, who still has plenty to say about her son's judgment (or lack thereof). Joel has to get the RV to San Francisco, get rid of Lincoln, and get back to Philip. It would also make him feel better if he learned what's keeping his mother tied to this earthly plane. However Joel manages it, the route is likely to be anything but straight.

Through the Bridge of Bones, to the Ancestor Tree, find the Fish that waits in the Sea.

Vernon is driven to find the mythical Diamond City, the last remaining artifact of the War that almost destroyed the planet thousands of years ago. Harold's expertise with the cavern dwellers allows him to follow his heart and accompany Vernon down into the cave systems that might lead to their goal.

In the midnight-dark depths of the caverns, danger abounds and both men are tried to the limits of their strength and their newfound love. Allied against them are the bad luck feared by the cavern dwellers, the ravenous spiderlike laminak, and the machinations of the deadly Queen of the Morven.

In the early 1990s, soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Matthew Robins, who is grieving the sudden loss of his lover, travels to Eastern Europe to claim an inheritance from a great-uncle. He discovers a world that is strange and oddly compelling. After facilitating a romance between his new friend Olga and her beloved Nina, he becomes smitten with a young local. At Olga's urging, he uses part of his inheritance to open a gay café, runs afoul of the local authorities, and has to be rescued by his estranged brother. But perhaps his most startling and moving discovery is a series of journals in his uncle's apartment, a thinly-veiled fictional account of a lifelong love affair between two men, a romance that survives war, genocide, and decades of Soviet repression.

OMG one fantastic story. Cannot even find the words for how much I loved this one.

Reviewed by April Kinslow

A must read

By Netgalley.com on Jun 20, 2016 05:06

Krish Nayar is not one who is into roughing it. Which is why he wasn't keen on the suggestion of camping near Cardiff to end out his vacation in the United Kingdom. But his friends thought it was a good idea, and he went along with it. Though it doesn't seem like a good idea after he trips in the woods, lost in fog, with no one around to help him. Krish is surprised when a knight in shining armor--literally--rides up on a horse to come to his aid. Although he's in pain, Krish finds the man's commitment to being in character amusing. He assumes this knight, Bleddyn, is an actor in a local renaissance faire. But when Bleddyn brings Krish back to the castle where he lives for medical attention, Krish begins to wonder just how much of this is an act. He might have actually somehow stumbled into the seventeenth century.

Despite his surroundings, Krish can't deny his attraction to his savior. And he's more than a little surprised when he gets a hint that Bleddyn might feel the same way. But if Krish acts on it, it could spell trouble. His kind of love wasn't exactly accepted in the 1600s. And he'll only be there until he finds his way back home, right?

Faced with circumstances beyond his imagination, Krish must decide to follow his head or his heart. -- This book has a few things going for it that always tend to interest me. I'm a sucker for some good historical romance. And when you throw in a time travel twist, you've certainly got me interested. When an author can put them together into a compelling story--then we're talking a must read. And this fits that bill. There's a powerful magic influencing the events in this story. And it's a magic that comes off the page and into the reader's imagination. I recommend this for anyone who is a fan of any of this story's subgenres.

Reviewed by Curtis Jefferson

A M/M romance set in Wales

By Netgalley.com on May 23, 2016 08:05

A M/M romance set in Wales? A gorgeous wise-cracking American of Indian descent? A gorgeous Welshman riding to the rescue through the fog? Time travel to the Wales of 1626? Sign me up!

E.L. Phillips did a very good job of showing just how much in love Krish and Bleddyn are, as well as their sizzling sexual chemistry, and I liked how the author threaded the story of Bleddyn's first love through the plot, and how that brought about a very satisfactory ending to the story.